ASUS shows STRIX Radeon R9 390 cards with DirectCU III cooling

ASUS has shown off its new STRIX series Radeon R9 390X and Radeon R9 390 graphics cards with the triple-fan DirectCU III cooling solution. The firm promises this cooling solution can passively cool the video card under idle and light 3D loads, the fan only kicks in under heavy 3D loads.

The R9 390 STRIX has a 1050MHz core (1000MHz reference) and the R9 390X STRIX is clocked at 1070MHz (1050MHz reference). Both models have 8GB GDDR5 memory clocked at 6000MHz.

It features a huge monolithic aluminium fin-stack heatsink, to which heat drawn from the GPU is fed by four 10 mm thick nickel-plated copper heat pipes. This heatsink is ventilated by three 100 mm spinners. This heatsink has contact bases even over the card's 8-phase VRM, and a base-plate that draws heat from its 16 GDDR5 memory chips, that make up 8 GB.